


Stand On Your Own

by Head_Of_Ianus



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Q (James Bond), Betrayal, Fake Character Death, Hurt James Bond, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, James Bond Has Issues, Loss of Trust, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Raoul Silva is Alive, Sorry But A Lot Of People Are Kinda Shit In This One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:08:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25429684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Head_Of_Ianus/pseuds/Head_Of_Ianus
Summary: Bond returns from a mission to find MI6 changed, and his Q supposedly long gone. The evidence tells a different story - and leads Bond onto a desperate search for a man declared dead.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94





	Stand On Your Own

**Author's Note:**

> A One-Shot that got... outta hand :') For 007 Fest 2020 Angst Prompts Trace & Lies.
> 
> Honestly, didn't read through it another time before posting today, because the Villains kept me well busy all day :'D I hope it isnt too bad and messy!

The first thing Bond noticed upon entering Q-Branch was an eerie silence.

Minions were working and there was the expected background noise of buzzing and heaving from computers and servers, but there wasn‘t the usual bustle and rustle of everyone working with and next to each other. Q-Branch was a hive mind, moving and thinking in unison in a rhythm wholly incomprehensible to outsiders and led by Q with orders and proposals from his elevated workspace like a king from his throne.

This wasn‘t his Q-Branch.

Familiar faces looked up at him as he made his first steps into their workspace, faces of Q‘s subordinates that he had amiably chatted with just two weeks ago, that had kitted him on occasion now barely moved in recognition before they were turned away from him, again. Bond's shoulders tensed up.

He couldn‘t spot Q anywhere, his workspace abandoned and empty in the very front.  
The tension started crawling down into his lower back.

“Where's Q? I‘d like to return my equipment.“

“He isn‘t here. Just place the equipment on the front desk, I‘ll gather and inspect it later“,

R had entered from one of the backrooms, shoulders set back and hair pulled into a strict, high bun. Her lips were set tight. The stares of Q‘s minions drilled into Bond's back, unwavering. He squared his shoulders subconsciously:

“Is everything quite alright?“

A vein on R‘s neck stuck out underneath her skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Her fingers and arms twitched in an aborted movement, and Bond noted he had never seen her in a blazer before. It wasn‘t her natural choice of clothing.

“Nothing. Please hand over the equipment and leave the workshop, 007.“

Red flag. He wasn‘t Bond or James anymore, just 007. A number, not a person. An acceptable designation if used by his superiors, but not usual for his colleagues. Three sharp clicks of heels on blank cement and one blink, and R had invaded his personal space. 007 didn‘t back away. She stared straight into his eyes, no trace of the sympathy he had grown so used to see.

“Hand over your equipment.“

“Where is Q?“

“Hand over your equipment.“

“No.“

Bond stepped back, hands held ready at his side, footing stable.

“No, I don‘t think I will do that.“

Cold stares continued to drill into him as he left the workshops. But he had his Walther by his side, and no one tried to stop him. His entire body crawled with electricity and tension.

* * *

Moneypenny claimed Q had died after one of his gadgets blew up in his face in his office. The yellow colour on her walls had greyed out since he last had been here. Or maybe it was the heavy, dark sky outside that tinged the room. Bond would have believed her lies and her numb, blunt eyes hadn‘t he see her fingers twitch. Red flag. Nervous tell. Bond started to get an inkling he was onto something, and it twisted in his guts.

Tanner seconded Moneypenny's claim. He was easier to read. A shift of weight away from him when he asked about Q, a flick of his eyes. Red flag. Nervous tell. The knife buried in his gut was being ripped out. He asked whether he could visit Q in the autopsy room. Tanner said they had buried him straight away. That there had been no reason to investigate. The reason for death had been clearly visible after all. It was all the confirmation Bond needed to know Q wasn‘t dead.

He didn‘t even ask M about Q, just requested a week of leave for a pulled muscle. M set his jaw and agreed to it, leaning towards him across his desk. Red Flag. Aggressive tell. Bond knew M was onto him, and M knew Bond was onto them, and he couldn‘t do shit against it officially until Bond did something he wasn‘t allowed to do. As Bond turned his back on M and walked out of the office without acknowledgment, he bloody well knew M could do a whole lot unofficially.

As he passed her, Moneypenny vehemently stared at a spot between his nape and head. His skin crawled with dread.

* * *

Breaking into MI6 at night turned out to be suspiciously easy.

Bond had chosen not to use the front entrance, although he probably could have strutted through it without anyone stopping him outright. He had a hunch M had already set up someone to keep an eye on him if he entered MI6 HQ again.

Good thing then that building code and regulations didn‘t allow any buildings to only have a singular entrance and exit. Figuring out the position of a backdoor had seemed easy enough, but Bond found himself cowering and hiding in crowds as he rounded the HQ, eyes always switching between keeping a good view on the building and the people looking out, and possible MI6 employees in the crowds he was hiding in.

He found an entrance, after all, leading straight to Human Resources, and just hoped no one had been able to spot him.

At around 0200, he picked the lock and slipped in, shutting the door behind him swiftly and as inconspicuous as possible. His eyes wandered over rows of clean white desk with paperwork stacked on them and spotted a single person sitting in the far corner of the room, lamp next to him burning and face down asleep on a piece of paper. The figure lifted his head slightly as the door fell shut with a click. Bond kept his face neutral as the man stared at him. Then he smiled, greeted him and just walked out of the room. He wasn‘t out of place. This was his workspace. He wasn‘t out of place. The head dropped back down onto its paperwork.

At around 0210, Bond had picked the lock to Q‘s office.

It was a battlefield.

Cabinet doors were thrown wide open, documents scattered on the ground. No buzzing from any computers left running, just treacherous silence. Someone had turned off the heating in the room as well. Bond swirled his flashlight around as he shuffled through the dark room. Cleopatra's and Curie's cat beds were missing as well as Q‘s favourite, sticker-littered laptop, and everything still left was thus alien, unfamiliar. Someone had gone through his papers, planes and sketches scattered on his desk and sorted them into stacks. He struggled to discern what the categories they were sorted into were supposed to be. At 0220, Bond placed himself in front of the abandoned desk and came to a conclusion that had been almost impossible for him to truly swallow, even if he had been chewing on it since its return.

There wasn‘t a single hint anything had been blown up in here. He had been lied to.  
It felt like someone was ripping open his windpipe with a dull knife down to his lungs and then his heart. He would rather have died.

His shirt started sticking to Bond's back as he paced the office. He opened his cuffs to roll up his sleeves and thought to himself again and again: Q isn‘t dead. No one was telling him about the game they were playing, but Q wasn‘t dead and Q had the answers, most likely. He just needed to find out where the other man had gone.

At 0230, Bond had worked through half of the second stack of documents on the table, and as he scanned through another report without expecting anything to stick out, placed the paper aside with leather-clad fingers. Underneath, binary code stared back at him, lines and lines of it, three sides stapled together, erratic, scratchy, scribbled in a hurry. Bond licked his bottom lip. A single bullet point on top claimed the code to be processor instructions, necessary for a project for 007.

There was a single note on the side of it, in different handwriting and in pencil.

_Send to Decode ASAP._

Bond folded the paper twice and placed it in the pocket of his jacket. Intuition told him he had found what he needed, and his skin was crawling again. He had stayed inside Q‘s office for too long for it to be safe.

Stepping out of the office, he turned around to re-lock it.

A gust of air hit the spot between his nape and head. Bond froze in place.

“I told you I wouldn‘t miss the shot if I really wanted to hit you.“

There was no amusement in Moneypenny‘s voice. There also was no remorse or doubt. Bond kept staring at the door in front of him, and did nothing but straighten up slightly.

“Well, you are not making it hard for yourself to actually hit me.“

“What have you taken from Q‘s office?“

“Nothing, can I turn around?“

Moneypenny said nothing. Bond turned around and looked down the barrel of her gun, and to her face behind it. Her jaw was held tightly, but her eyes glinted.

“He isn‘t dead, is he?“

“You are delusional.“

“There's no sign of destruction in there, no sign of any gadgets exploding.“

“Hand over whatever you took from this office, Bond.“

“We wouldn‘t have to do this if you just told me what happened, Eve -“

“I have permission from M to shoot at you if you do not comply. I don't want to...-“

Bond lost control over his face for a second, his eyes wide with momentary realization and shock. He took a step back towards the door. Moneypenny's face twitched, and for a moment he spotted something like conflict cross it, but then it was gone. He composed himself. His entire body was thrumming with disbelief.

Until Moneypenny shifted her footing, broadening her posture. Allowing a slight bend in her elbows. Pulling her shoulders back. Aiming her gun truly at his face, getting ready to shoot him in the head. His chest ached with freezing betrayal.

“Bond. Hand. It. Over.“

Bond dropped his shoulders and raised his empty hands, signalling surrender.

“Okay, okay, got it. I‘m going to take the document out and hand it to you, alright?“

Moneypenny nodded.

Bond crammed in his pockets. He ignored the document he had taken from Q, and pulled out something else, slowly, waiting, until-

For a brief second, Moneypenny lowered her gun a few milometers. Bond pulled out his hand along with the lock picking tools and tossed them at her. Moneypenny's eyes tracked the movement, and at once Bond was on her, twisting the gun out of her hand.  
Kick to the back of the knees. Moneypenny went down, and Bond bolted, sprinting and sprinting until he had reached Human Resources. Moneypenny's gun was heavy in his hand, and Q‘s note heavier in his pocket.

He rounded the corner into the group office with the backdoor and -

The man from the corner table jumped onto him, a vase in hand, ready to smash in his head. They went down. Bond straddled by the man, and the gun was still in his hand and Q‘s note still in his pocket. He wasn‘t taking chances. There was a brief moment of shock when his attacker looked down the barrel before the bullet shredded his facial structure, and then there was silence. The body sacked down onto Bond. He spotted some brain matter on the floor behind them and felt a warm blotch of blood forming on his chest. He had just murdered a fellow MI6 employee.

He was fucked.

* * *

Bond had tried to decode Q‘s message on his own. He hadn‘t found out shit, the binary had just turned into a different sort of code that had turned out to be another code and then another — until he had had enough and broken into another government building. He had a sinking feeling there wasn‘t much more damage he could do to his name.

Tiago Rodriguez grin was distorted by his missing prosthesis, skin falling in and down beneath his right cheekbone. Bond wished he had just killed the man. The glaring, unforgiving light of his prison cell made the new wrinkles and scars in his face more apparent. Rodriguez himself probably wished Bond had just killed him. He had bloody well-tried to get the job done himself after he had — to his horror — woken up in medical and found out Mansfield was dead, and they hadn‘t let him die.

The last time Bond had seen the other man, he had been close to a mental break. Eyes wide and haunted, skin a sickly grey, sweaty and hair greasy, frothing at the mouth for someone to just put a bullet through his skull. Bond had been thoroughly disgusted with him. He didn‘t feel as superior now.

These days, Rodriguez was back to how he had looked when he had still been on his island, only that his suit had been replaced with an ugly, bright orange prison over-all. He looked healthy. He looked well-put-together. And right now, he looked too damn pleased with himself.

“You should have listened to me, James. Then again, you never take good advice.“

God, Bond wanted to shoot the man.

The cell they kept him in was clinical, white, separated from the anteroom by a glass door so that guards were able to keep an eye on Rodriguez. The official imperative was to keep him alive, after all. Bond stared right back at Rodriguez through the glass and showed no reaction to his taunts.

“Can you decode his message?“

“Of course I can.“

Rodriguez looked positively affronted, but when Bond told him to get to work if he could truly decode it, he let out a laugh, amused.

“It's quite adorable that your loverboy Q left you a treasure map to find him, of course, but please give me one good reason why I should help you? You couldn‘t even properly put me in the ground, James. That's a tad pathetic.“

“Don‘t you want to fuck over MI6 and get back at them?“

“Negative. I wanted to get to M.“

A bitter twitch distorted his face to a grimace, lips tight and pursed, anger that had already burned out years ago flashing in his eyes. Bond kept silent and watched as Rodriguez proceeded to sit down on his bed. White sheets. Bloody hell, the man was the only blotch of colour in the entire cell. That was something he could work with.

“You always said you only possessed what you truly need. I don‘t buy it. You are vain. I‘m sure we could get you some conveniences in here if you were willing -“

“Boring! That’s so bloody boring, Bond, come on! Aren‘t you creative at all? Offer me something interesting!“,

Rodriguez had thrown his hands out with open disdain, and Bond kept staring at him, trying to figure out a weak spot, something Rodriguez surely would need but that wasn‘t too preposterous for him to think Bond wouldn‘t be able to get it done.

The other man meanwhile pushed a few strands of hair out of his face, and then — for a split second — he flinched, as the back of his hand touched his fallen in cheek.

Bond knew exactly what to aim for. He stepped up directly to the glass door, as close as he could get to invading Rodriguez's personal space, and forced his mouth into a smile, cruel and unkind.

“I could get you your prosthesis back.“

He had hit. Rodriguez charade fell like a tower of cards that Bond had blown a gust into, and suddenly he avoided Bond's eyes, hand nervously twitching towards his deformed face. He was insecure, unsettled, but not at his breaking point. Well, Bond could push some more. He leaned onto the glass.

“I was right. You are vain. Is it uncomfortable, having every single guard stare at your face in disgust? Don‘t pretend you don‘t need the prosthesis, don‘t pretend it isn‘t armour. And they just took away all your protection and armour, stripped you bare and threw you into a cell — doesn‘t that remind you of China?  
Doesn‘t it remind you of -“

Rodriguez's chest was heaving with barely concealed panic, and his lips and eyes had been twitching nervously since Bond had started talking. His shaking hands gripped the white, white bedsheets underneath his fingers, and he finally hissed:

“Give me the bloody code and never come back here ever again, Bond.“

* * *

Two days later, he received a note with a single sentence.

“I heard Cape Town is quite lovely this time of year. R.“

Bond knew where he needed to go.

* * *

It took him another two weeks in Cape Town to find out Q‘s new identity and name, another three days to track him down, and three more hours to get a look at him.

Q was on an empty beach, staring out into the sunset when Bond approached him.  
The waves crashed softly against the sand in front of their feet, and Q didn‘t even bother turning towards him. Bond was desperate, and for a few seconds, he didn‘t even know how to start, until Q took the words right out of his mouth:

“Do you want to know what happened?“

“That would be a start, yeah.“

Q made a sound close to a hum, unconcerned and without a rush. There were no bitter lines around his forehead or mouth, there was no burning resentment in his eyes. Q had remained calm and collected, unafraid.

“I openly disobeyed and disagreed with M‘s decisions. Then I told them I was going to quit, and if they wouldn‘t let me quit, I‘d just leave anyway.“

“What was -“

“You can‘t trust governments to act morally, James. Bloody hell, I love England, that's not the issue, but I love the people, and I have a functioning moral compass. They were asking me to help murder people for monetary gain. It's just not on.“

Q had turned towards him now. There was a new scar on his cheek, but he looked less tired than he did back at MI6. Less drained, less stressed. The bags under his eyes fewer, his face filled out some more. Bond wanted desperately to touch Q, just to make sure he really wasn‘t dead, no corpse rotting in the wet, muddy ground in England but a living, breathing being standing on the warm sand of the beach in Cape Town. Q let him. The scar tissue was rough, but it was new. There was still a story left to tell.

“What happened after that?“

“Well, clearly, they can‘t just let me leave, can they? I knew way too much for that.“

“So they decided to let someone take you out?“

“Mhm.“

For a moment, a sardonic smile split Q‘s face open. Bond felt the shift of soft skin underneath his fingertips.

“They didn‘t do a good enough job, as you see. Anyway, that was the end of the line for me. I got the rest of my things in order and left. Didn‘t get away before someone tried to shoot me in the face, though.

“They told me you died because a gadget blew up in your face.“

Q laughed, full-body laughter that Bond had never seen on him before, and his hand fell away for a brief second and landed on Q‘s shoulder. Thus pushing up the sleeves off his soft white linen shirt, he gently placed his hand on Bond's arm and just kept it there, surprisingly cold palm against his burning skin.

“I guess they had to come up with something rather quickly. They couldn‘t just tell the government one of their execs ran away. It would be a scandal, a disaster.“

Bond didn‘t know what exactly to say. He had expected something, had built up theories in his head in the last weeks, and some of the worst of them had now turned out to be true. He stared at Q‘s eyes and face, intact and not as bitter as he had expected, and he marveled.

„Why did you leave me the bloody note, Q?“

„You deserve a chance, James. M was quite convinced you are a blunt weapon, someone to throw at a perceived enemy if you needed them dead. I don‘t think you are.“

Something in Bond's heart ached, and with every fiber of his body, he wanted to disagree. He loved his country, he loved his people, and he would do anything for them. That's what he had been raised to do. That's what everyone had kept telling him was his purpose. If it meant dying for his country than that was barely a price to pay, he had been taught that it was an honour. Then he remembered Q-Branch in utter silence and Eve with a gun at his neck. He had remembered Rodriguez's distraught face when he had recounted how M had betrayed him, and he, for a frightening moment, understood. Because even if he lied to himself about it, some part of him had expected the country, the government, the people, his friends that he had fought for to his dying breath, to love him back. To protect him as well, and show gratitude. And it had turned out they all were only being used as replaceable pawns.

Bond's mouth opened, and it shut, wordless, helpless, until Q pressed his arm gently, grounding him back into a reality he wasn‘t sure he could handle.

“You already proved that you have morale on your own by following me here. Tracing my steps. I was right to give you a chance to be your own person before they tear you apart entirely and throw you away. You know what happened to Rodriguez. I couldn‘t have lived if they had done the same to you without at least trying to get you out.“

The light started to fade out around them as Bond's knees started to give in. Some terrible part of himself felt like a lost little boy, abandoned by his parents and slowly starting to find out that they weren‘t the heroes he had viewed them as. He was losing his footing, he felt like he didn‘t know up from down anymore, the world was turning and — oh, he was crying.

And Q guided his arms around him until Bond himself was holding on for dear life. There was a soft hand in his hair, calm, safe, secure, and all the things he had thought to have lost:

“Let's go home. I still need to feed the cats, and you need to tell me how you solved the bloody code, I was pretty sure you were going to give up because of that. What a frightening prospect.“

The entire world was collapsing around him, and somehow, Bond still found it in himself to groan in dismay.

“Bloody Tiago Rodriguez.“

“Wow. You really were desperate.“

“Please don‘t make me think about him.“

Q laughed and took his hand to lead him home. Maybe the entire world was collapsing around Bond, but Q knew the way out of the rubble, and for now, he‘d just have to follow until he knew how to stand on his own.


End file.
